The Pentagon’s safety and oversight measures have didn’t hold tempo with the proliferation of navy services that deal with labeled info and the personnel who work there, however the Defense Department doesn’t have a systemic drawback in retaining its secrets and techniques secret, a brand new overview concludes.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a 45-day overview of Pentagon insurance policies and procedures in April after a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman was accused of leaking top-secret paperwork.

Jack Teixeira, the airman, was accused of posting a trove of secret paperwork to a web based chat group. He pleaded not guilty final month to 6 counts of federal felony expenses.

Before that, nonetheless, Mr. Austin directed high aides to find out how large a safety drawback the Pentagon had on its palms. Was Airman Teixeira an outlier who violated his oath to not disclose navy secrets and techniques? Or was he symptomatic of a a lot bigger drawback throughout the navy ranks that had gone undetected for years?

The overview, which the Pentagon is anticipated to launch and describe to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, concluded there was neither a “single point of failure” to clarify Airman Teixeira’s disclosures nor any widespread breakdown within the navy’s procedures for dealing with and overseeing confidential info, stated two senior navy officers briefed on the evaluation’s findings.

Instead, the overview discovered that the spectacular progress in navy services and other people dealing with labeled info, significantly because the terrorist assaults on Sept. 11, 2001, had far outpaced the navy’s skill to maintain that info safe, stated the officers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the report’s main findings.

The overview advisable that the division spend extra money, take further steps and assign extra folks to tighten safety across the dealing with of labeled info, the officers stated. Additional safeguards ought to embrace stricter measures to forestall using digital gadgets inside labeled work areas, the place confidential info or photographs might be photographed or recorded.

Besides the federal felony investigation, Frank Kendall, the secretary of the Air Force, has directed the service’s inspector common to take a look at the Air National Guard 102nd Intelligence Wing, the place Airman Teixeira served, and at how the airman was in a position to put up lots of of nationwide safety paperwork in a chat room for players. From there, they finally drifted to Twitter and the messaging platform Telegram.

New questions in regards to the command surfaced in May, when a Justice Department submitting revealed that Air Force officers caught Airman Teixeira taking notes and looking for labeled materials months earlier than he was charged with leaking an unlimited trove of presidency secrets and techniques, however didn’t take away him from his job.

On two events, in September and October 2022, Airman Teixeira’s superiors within the Massachusetts Air National Guard admonished him after experiences that he had taken “concerning actions” whereas dealing with labeled info. Those included stuffing a notice into his pocket after reviewing secret info inside his unit, in line with the courtroom submitting.

That info raised troubling questions on whether or not the navy missed alternatives to cease or restrict one of the damaging intelligence leaks in latest historical past.

Airman Teixeira appears to have retained his top-secret safety clearance after he was admonished and subsequently obtained the second of two certificates after finishing coaching meant to forestall the unauthorized disclosure of labeled info.